


Seeing Double

by not_whelmed_yet



Series: Doubly Blessed and Doubly Cursed [1]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Asexual Space Robots, Dating, Dialogue Heavy, Falling In Love, Feelings Heavy, Grief/Mourning, Kidnapping, M/M, Mnemosurgery, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Polyamory, Psychological Torture, Rescue Missions, Sappy Ending, Self-Hatred, Some Plot, Two Chromedomes, Unlikely Friendships, What-If, but we're working on it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-07-05
Packaged: 2018-11-12 22:33:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11171460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/not_whelmed_yet/pseuds/not_whelmed_yet
Summary: Rewind begged him to do it, to forget. Follow orders and live.  And here Chromedome does.  Somehow, defying all logic, both he and Rewind survive the non-existence of their Lost Light.  How will they live with the consequences?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> To make this story work, imagine that Brainstorm died with his mask on in this continuity and then decides to postpone his time travel adventure until Rewind is home safe.
> 
> This is my first time posting up an in-progress story that has an actual plot, not just a collection of shorts. I've no idea how many chapters it's going to go, but I'm hoping for around 15K total?
> 
> This work is theoretically edited, but every time I reread I notice a few mistakes - so if anything catches your eye, feel free to let me know in the comments.

There were needles in the back of his neck and a familiar presence in his brain. It took a moment to push through the haze and realize that presence was him. Pressure on his fingertips and he knew the needles were his. Dread rushed him and he tried to pull out.

A hand clamped around his wrist. "Not so fast _Domey_. We wouldn't want anyone putting ideas in your head, later on."

He pulled but the hand didn't move. He couldn't struggle at full strength without risking a needle slipping and stabbing something important. He onlined his optics and audials all at once, dread rising to pure animal panic as he remembered.

The air was thick with ozone and the stench of leaked oil and spoiled energon. The bodies were piled on the ground, obscene. He raised his chin and the D.J.D. loomed into view, leering at him. They were holding down some minibot, who was thrashing under Kaon's hand, vocalizer stuck in a low desperate whine. Their optics met and Chromedome wished the poor bugger a quick death.

"Don't struggle _Domey_ ," Tarn purred. "This is a delicate operation." Another hand clawed over his face as the other began pushing the needles deeper. The pain was sudden and blinding. He forgot his fear of the needles slipping and began thrashing and desperately trying to break free. Tarn dragged him to the floor, grinding his face into the ground.

"Oops, my hand slipped," he said. The needles slid to the hilt and snapped off. Everything shattered and slowed to a dreamlike haze. He heard a scream, the hiss of fire and the world slid away.

 

* * *

 

When his optics came back online it was in one of the darkened isolation rooms in the medbay of the Lost Light. His chronometer spun for a minute, then popped back with a date and time several months after his death. Something began beeping and a light came on in the break room. He couldn't turn to see it, something bracing his head in place. There were footsteps and Ratchet bloomed, alive and whole, into his vision.

Ratchet smiled an unexpected, soft smile. "Looks like our miracle patient is awake. Don't panic, Chromedome. The explanation is long and confusing, but the important thing is that we're all okay, pretty much. And you're going to be okay too, if I've got anything to say about it."

"Was it all..." he wasn't sure what it could have been. A dream? A bad reaction to too much injecting? One of Brainstorm's inventions gone horribly wrong? "Was it real?"

"Yes," Ratchet said. "But it wasn't here. What's the simplest way to say this? There was an accident with the quantum engines and somehow we ended up in two places at once. Which is to say, somehow we ended up with two ships. We stumbled across your Lost Light; you were the only survivor. That was some sort of violation of the rules of reality and the oth-your Lost Light disappeared. We thought you would disappear with it, but somehow you're here."

In all world, he'd never heard anything more absurd. He looked back over his HUD, checking over the readouts. Ratchet gave him the time. Eventually, he asked, "So they all died, but that's okay because you guys are the backups?" The words tasted bitter.

Ratchet sighed and put his hand over Chromedome's. "What happened to you will _never_ be okay. Do you want me to get someone else with a better bedside manner to explain this? Should I get Rung?"

Chromedome tried to shake his head, rememebered the restraint and said, "No. I want it from you. I know you'll give it to me straight." He thought for a minute. "How long have I been on board?"

"Two days. You were offline on the ship for months before we arrived. The mnemosurgery needles pierced your spinal conduit and two of them are poking into your brain module. We needed to do surgery before you could power back up on your own. In another day your self-repair should be far enough along that I can remove the head block." Ratchet grimaced. "We couldn't remove the needles that pierced the brain module. Your brain module should be able to reroute circuits to compensate. But any attempt at extraction might trigger a full systems wipe, according to Brainstorm. Once you're recovered more, you can look over the scans yourself."

"With those in there, no-one will ever be able to do mnemosurgery on me, will they?" Chromedome asked. _Wouldn't want anyone putting ideas in your head._

"You'd know better than me. Now, we don't need to debrief yet. Rung is going to insist you set up sessions with him."

"What about...there was one crewmember left alive when they...did this. I didn't recognize him, but we hadn't been in flight all that long. Was he among the dead?"

"We didn't do a full survey of the ship, but I might know. Description?"

"A bit over average minibot height. We didn't have a lot of minibots, I don't know how I had never seen him before. White and grey frame, no wheels, square shoulders. White helm, blue optics, some sort of camera mounted by his head."

Ratchet froze. "Chromedome? You're describing Rewind."

"Who's Rewind?"

"Your Conjunx Endura."


	2. In The Long Dark Hours of the Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Basically entirely dialogue. Chromedome (2.0) has some unexpected conversations while confined to the medibay.

He was shaken awake by a ghost wearing his face. It took a few nano-kliks to realize the other him was real. His double loomed over the bed, putting a digit up to his visor to signal silence. The door to the medibay was shut and the lights sleep-cycle dim. Of course, Ratchet had turned down the lights in his room to 'reduce strain on his central processor while it works on repairing the cerebro circuitry', so who knew what part of the shift they were in.

Perhaps he'd come to kill him. There were a lot of ways to kill a bot stuck in traction. A little trickier to kill them dead enough that they couldn't be resuscitated, given that they were in a medibay right now, but it could be done. If he were smart, he'd have looped the monitoring equipment before coming in, it could be a long time before a medic came in and checked the isolation room.

"Hey, I'm sorry about this," the other him said, "Ratchet's doing his best to keep me away from you, it took awhile to sneak in." He lowered himself to one knee. From that angle he looked less like a lurking assassin and more like an Amica at a sickbed.

"In his defense, I'm told I allowed the Decepticon Justice Division to abduct your Conjunx Endura," Chromedome said. "And erased him from my head. If I were you, I would be..." He wasn't sure there were words for it.

"I was furious. When I first heard. I still am furious. But I'm not sure who I'm mad at: you or me. It's gotten a bit complicated." The other Chromedome tapped his hand on the edge of the berth. "So I'm going to focus on Rewind. Tell me everything you can remember."

"I told Ratchet. I told the command staff. I told Rung. I wasn't holding back information from them," he said.

The other him let his head fall to the berth in supplication. "I know. I know. But he's my Conjunx. There could be some little detail that wouldn't mean anything to them that could mean something to me. I have to know."

He went through the scant little he could remember. The other him kept pushing for details about unrelated things. Where had he been standing when the attack began. How soon had he been singled out as a spectator. Where had the hands holding Rewind been positioned.

"Is Rodimus going to launch a rescue mission?" He asked, finally, after the questions had tapered off and the other him had subsided into into silence.

The other him shook his head. "Nobody is telling me anything. I may be the only person who's really convinced he's still alive. You both should have ceased to exist when the other Lost Light did."

"If only if it weren't for this fragging brain damage, you could just pull it out of me, whatever you're looking for. That would be so much simpler for everyone. Maybe if you brought your Rewind around, that could trigger some of the memories to come back?"

"Not possible." The other him stood abruptly. "I have to go now. I'll be back, if I hear anything. Don't," he shook his head, "don't hurt yourself, okay? I need you in one piece so you can help me find Rewind."

He turned to go. In the dim lighting, Chromedome hadn't noticed till just then that his autobot badge was painted over black. Lamentatorem colors.

 

* * *

 

"Why are you here?"

It wasn't as if he was receiving many visitors. Maybe the morbid weirdness of the situation was scaring them off. Maybe everyone was just busy. It's not as if he knew them, exactly. But in the empty isolation room he kept wishing for some sort of external timekeeper, becoming convinced again and again that his chronometer was recording incorrectly. The cycles passed in jumps and shudders, slowing till it was intolerable and then skipping past whenever he looked away.

So it wasn't as if he objected to the idea of a visitor, especially one officially permitted by Ratchet. He objected to being visited by a Decepticon murdering hobgoblin.

Cyclonus did not attempt to approach the berth, remaining safely out of armsreach. He stood rather awkwardly by the doorway for a few kliks, then removed a large sword from his back, setting it slowly across the seat of the chair by the door. He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall, regarding Chromedome with narrowed red optics. He looked a bit different, but the difference wasn't coming to him.

"I said, why are you here, Decepticon?" He spat.

Cyclonus looked unruffled. "I am not, nor have I ever been, a Decepticon. How tiresome to have to have the same conversations all over again."

"We are not friends," Chromedome stated, hoping that he could speak for both him and his double. That slagged moron hadn't cozied up with Cyclonus, of all people, had he?

"We are not friends," Cyclonus agreed. "But neither are we enemies. Rewind and I shared an understanding, on account of our age and his kindness. Your other and I learned to coexist for his sake."

"Do I have to ask you a third time to get a straight answer out of you?" Chromedome asked.

Cyclonus shifted his gaze away. "I find myself uniquely in a position to understand your present situation. I too once inhabited a world now dead and then found myself thrown aboard this ship and all the...life that came with it. Those long silent hours of the night, when you're convinced that this is an imagining or a trick and that any moment you will be wakened and dragged back into it?"

Chromedome's spark caught. To have a stranger describe back his most private, irrational terror felt shameful, somehow a violation.

"It never goes away," Cyclonus continued. "But I've found that keeping company close by keeps the fear a little farther away. If you would not rather I leave, I will stay here until I am back on duty."

To say that Cyclonus wasn't much of a talker would have been an understatement. Chromedome wasn't sure he'd ever heard him say two sentences sequentially before, much less three sentences with no threat embedded within. Of course, they weren't friends. Not that Cyclonus had friends. He was a barely tolerated stowaway and security risk. Ultra Magnus had favored keeping him confined to quarters until they could return to Cybertron to drop him off.

Maybe this Cyclonus had grown into a different sort of person. Because Chromedome couldn't imagine the one he had known offering up his own weaknesses as a kindness. And Chromedome didn't want to be alone just then.

"You can stay," he said. "And you can sit, if you'd like."

Cyclonus inclined his head, but chose not to sit. Whatever, weirdo. Chromedome let himself slip into a half-wakeful state, wondering where on the ship they could find an open room for him after he was released from medical. He wasn't sure what crew changes had been made on _this_ Lost Light, but he'd probably end up with a roommate. He didn't remember one from his ship, but that would have been Rewind, wouldn't it? He could picture his habsuite, room 108, but the other berth stayed stubbornly empty and dark. Now that he'd had more time alone in his head, he'd realized how much of his recent past was gone. The Rewind-shaped hole in his memory had apparently encompassed most of his life for the past several centuries, minimum.

"What happened to this Rewind?" he asked. From the corner of his optics, he could see Cyclonus stiffen. "You spoke of him in the past tense. And the other Chromedome, he's in mourning colors."

"He died," Cyclonus said shortly. "You should have been told that."

"I wasn't," Chromedome said. "How did it happen?"

Cyclonus spoke slowly. "I am not privy to all the details. I am neither part of the command staff or Rodimus's inner circle. It was after Overlord escaped his cell. The crew forced him off of the ship, but somehow Rewind ended up trapped in his cell with him. We destroyed the cell with Rewind still inside." He paused. "The other you does not speak of it."

"I'm sorry for your loss." The words escaped his voice box, bypassing his processor entirely.

Cyclonus looked as shocked as he did. "My loss?"

"You said he was kind to you." Who else would be on this ship? "You came here for his sake, so you must have cared about him." And who else would care for Cyclonus's loss, especially in the face of the other Chromedome losing his conjunx.

The kliks drifted by in silence as Cyclonus stood, motionless.

Eventually, and Chromedome literally had to check his chronometer to ascertain the passage of time was continuing as normal before it happened, Cyclonus inclined his head. "Thank you," he said.

In the time before Cyclonus's next shift, Chromedome somehow managed to settle into an uneasy recharge. Cyclonus stood guard in silence.

 

* * *

 

The ghost wearing his face was back again. "It took me longer than I expected to get back here," he said. " I think Rodimus is scared I'm going to launch off on a solo rescue mission. He's been watching me like a hawk."  
  
"Rescue mission?" Chromedome asked. "Is he alive, then?"  
  
"It's not solid proof," the other him said, sitting down in Cylonus's chair. "But we intercepted a broadcast the D.J.D. sent out to scare other Decepticon deserters. It's a video, thankfully just of Overlord's execution. It was recorded on Rewind's camera."  
  
"Okay." He waited for the significance of this to be explained. He didn't want to come straight out and ask if data could be removed from the camera's memory if Rewind was deceased .  
  
"It backs up my personal theory that they might be keeping him around as some sort of," his double shivered, "involuntary videographer. Sadists love an audience. If we run into any other broadcasts that weren't recorded on the ship, that'll cinch it."  
  
"And then we'll launch the rescue mission?"  
  
"I don't know," his double said.  
  
It was almost a relief. There was nothing he wanted less than for this ship to get turned around, Rodimus at the helm, charging blindly into that hopeless fight. They were outmatched. His ship had died as an object lesson of that fact.  
  
But the thought of leaving Rewind behind, for all that he was a stranger, made him feel sick. But Rewind wasn't exactly a stranger, was he? He was Cyclonus's friend. The night before, Cyclonus had shared a story of Rewind showing him archival footage of Old Cybertron. From the reverence with which he spoke, it had obviously been very important to him. After that, Rewind had tracked down enough footage of an equinox festival in Tetrahex to string together a private screening for Cyclonus. Through Cyclonus, he was getting a picture of someone hopelessly kind, with a lion heart that took on challenges his tiny frame could not match. Who forgave too much and too easily. That was easy enough to believe, if Rewind had managed to put up with him long enough for them to somehow become conjunxes.  
  
"Why don't you hate me?" Chromedome asked. "This was your chance to get Rewind back. All I had to do was be better and protect him. You could be off on this ship wooing a new Rewind and I could be dead and gone, where I belong!"  
  
"I do hate you," the other him said. "I hate you. I hate you for forgetting Rewind because you don't have to live with having lost him. I blame me for getting him killed!"  
  
The other him paced back and forth, venting heavily. "I let Overlord overpower me and escape that cell. I didn't stop Rewind from getting in the cell to lose the jammed door. I was the one who pulled the trigger. I killed him, in every sense of the word."  
  
Oh.  
  
"So I do hate you. I hate you because you're me, and I have always hated me. And I hate that you get to live without the grief that is," he shook his head, "I keep seeing his ghost, you know? Out of the corner of my eye. You get to live without the grief that is _eating me alive_. But you aren't guilty of the one thing I hate myself the most for."  
  
"Lucky you."  
  
His next guest was even more unexpected than Cyclonus continued to be. After the long delay with no word, he'd assumed Brainstorm was keeping him at arms length while supporting his actual friend .  
  
Instead, it seemed he'd been avoiding him out of a morbid curiosity for his counterpart on Chromedome's ship .  
  
"And were you actually there when I died?" Brainstorm asked, fidgeting with the clasps of his briefcase. Cyclonus was back in his chair and his presence seemed to make Brainstorm feel very uncomfortable. Chromedome could ask him to leave, but he was feeling pretty annoyed with Brainstorm right at that moment .  
  
"Yes and I very much do not want to talk about it. Have you considered asking Rung to explain what a traumatic experience is to you in slightly longer words so you can understand it ?"  
  
"I don't need you to describe in all the gory detail!" Brainstorm said with a casual wave of his hand. "I just needed to know if they said anything...interesting, or strange, before they murdered the other me. Curious, you know."  
  
"Wondering if your reputation has stretched all the way to the D.J.D.?" Chromedome asked.  
  
"Let's go with that. Did they? Say anything strange?"  
  
Chromedome, with a great deal of mental control, did not think back to the moment of. Presumably if they'd said anything important he would remember it. Hence, no need to run back through the memory again in search of nothing to fluff up Brainstorm's ego. "Nope. Just the usual taunting and murdering. Sorry, Brainstorm."  
  
"Oh." Brainstorm slumped a bit, tension leaving his frame. Chromedome almost would have said that he sagged in relief, but that would have been a weird reaction to being told he was murdered in a fairly standard manner .  
  
"Was there anything else you wanted to talk to me about?" He asked.  
  
"Oh yes! Me and Percepter, we've been working together on something and I'm nearly certain it's going to work. 'Cepter isn't as sure yet, hence why command hasn't been briefed yet. But you're not running around blabbing to everybody and," he looked over his shoulder at Cyclonus, "you don't seem like the gossiping sort either ."  
  
He played with the datapad he'd been carrying around for a minute and a tiny hologram sparked to life. A complex machine with little cables curling out of it in all directions. "We've figured out how to stop time."  
  
"Wait, what?"  
  
"I had to pull some supplies from a...personal project to do it, but yeah. The rig sets up a time expansion field that encompasses everything that touches some of the cables. For all intents and purposes, to the people hooked in, it should appear that time has stopped for everyone else ."  
  
This seemed rather a big invention to be revealing in the medibay instead of announcing at some grand Advanced Technologies conference. "Does this have something to do with me?"  
  
"It's for the rescue. See the main trouble was getting the tolerance high enough so we could include enough mass inside the field to travel with a shuttle. I think we've got that pretty much sorted now, so we're onto live trials. Me and Percepter are taking alternating shifts as test subjects until he's satisfied it's actually safe ."  
  
"Rescue?" Had they found Rewind? Had someone found Rewind and not thought to tell him?  
  
"Ah, yes, need to go further back to have a coherent explanation. Me and Percepter were thinking that a few bots, not more than three given the capacity of the field, would take the field generator and a shuttle and fetch back Rewind. Turn it on after you leave the ship, fly over to whatever the D.J.D. call their ship, hustle till you run into little Rewind, pick him up, bring him home. From their perspective it should look as though he simply vanishes! And, since they've already murdered us all once, we should be fairly far down their list of possible suspects ."  
  
"Has Rewind been found , then?" Cyclonus asked.  
  
Brainstorm jumped, revving in panic. "Gah! I forgot you talked for a second there, nobody mind me. Um, not exactly. But we think we're tracking them. Got a lock on the signal source from the second video transmission, which you should all be very thankful you didn't get to see ."  
  
After the long delay where both of the other people in the room carefully did not prompt him for more details, Brainstorm divulged, "It was Drift and Ratchet's deaths. Very messy. Very unpleasant. Rodimus purged his tanks in the command room."  
  
Chromedome's processor brought up the image in beautiful crystalline quality. Some of the attack was hard to remember, either fuzzed out by proximity to the missing space that was Rewind or to the forced shutdown at the end. The rest of it was what gave him a break from his old nightmares he'd acquired from doing autopsies.  
  
"You will leave now." Cyclonus said. Why would he leave? This was his room? It took a klik to settle his shaking frame and remember that Brainstorm was in the room, and by then Cyclonus had shuffled him back out of the room .  
  
"Thanks," he said. There was no response, but he knew better than to expect one at this point. "You've never asked about yourself. Your other self, I mean."  
  
"That is true." Cyclonus agreed. "I have been dead before and I will be again. Knowing the circumstances would do me no good and would do you harm. There is no point."  
  
"I almost never saw the other you. Magnus had him confined to quarters till the end there."  
  
"That was a prudent tactical decision," Cyclonus said.  
  
From outside the door there was the thudding of rapid footsteps. Not too heavy, probably a minibot. There was a knock at the door, but they then opened the door without waiting for a response.  
  
Tailgate inside, poking his finger at Cyclonus. "There you are! I looked all over Primus's creation on this ship before I thought to ask Ratchet of all people, where you might be. You're ten kliks late for our prac-" He froze, then looked around the room, visor brightening somewhat when it landed on Chromedome. "Other Chromedome, oh, Primus, I am sorry. I didn't mean to barge in like that, I thought Ratchet was having Cy do some filing in a back room or something."  
  
Cyclonus made a low rumbling sound, which could be interpreted as either a sound of admonishment or an indication of amusement. "Chromedome, this is my roommate Tailgate. Tailgate, this is the 'other' Chromedome. You should introduce yourself."  
  
"Um, hi? Did we, I mean, did you know the Tailgate on your ship well?" Tailgate floundered.  
  
"We got along well enough, but we weren't especially close," Chromedome said. "You were always with a different crowd, floating around like a social butterfly. Hard to get close to anyone that way, unless you're big on Swerve's late-night parties."  
  
"But what about Cyclonus?" Tailgate demanded. "We were roommates, right?"  
  
Cyclonus put a clawed hand on Tailgate's shoulder. "They were not roommates, no. Chromedome." He nodded a farewell as he steered Tailgate out of the room.  
  
In the hallway Chromedome could hear Tailgate talking, rapid-fire as they retreated. "So that's where you've been? I thought you'd been in a fight and gotten in trouble and gotten rivet duty or something! I thought you and Chromedome hated each other."  
  
"Their names are the same and their frames look similar," Cyclonus said. "But they are different mechs. Do not confuse this Chromedome with the one you already know."  
  
Their voices petered to nothing as they retreated away from his room and Chromedome resigned himself to another early recharge. It felt like all he did lately was sleep. Ratchet said that was the brain damage. It was still remaking neural connections in his cerebro circuitry to reroute around the permanent additions of two needles in his brain module. The rerouting took time and energy and was easiest to process when he was in recharge, hence the feeling tired down to his struts all the time .  
  
He wanted this phase of recovery to be over with. He wanted to be out of this tiny room and the low lighting Ratchet had prescribed. But the thought of moving into an empty habsuite, surrounded by the bustle of the ghosts of near everyone he knows, going about their business, made him feel flat and empty. Before now, it hadn't occurred to him that Cyclonus might have had a roommate. He'd considered asking to stay with him. Nobody else had come to visit him except his double and he doubted the other Chromedome would take him moving in and sleeping in his dead conjunx's berth well .  
  
  
It had been nagging him for awhile. At first he thought it was a reaction to the reforming neural connections, a bit of neural feedback. But it was increasingly intrusive. An anomalous series of sensory memories.  
  
The sound of rain, a hard rain beating down on something metal and hollow. The feeling of water slipping down the seams of his shoulders. A fierce warmth in his spark casing that made him want to float. The smell of something hot and crisp and indescribable. Pain that pulses in his knee joints. The distinct sensation of being late for something.  
  
It came and went, but sometimes the sensations hit him like a truck, all at once. There's something familiar in the pattern and the order, but it took him awhile to pin it down. None of the sensations matched to any of his memories, which was the first clue. The second was when he finally remembered first hearing the rain, right after he'd wiped out Rewind .  
  
At the new institute he'd worked with a mech named Helix, who'd had a theory about breaking wipes. Instead of erasing memories you could bury them in other sections of the brain, where the neural connections could never be linked back up by self-repair. You used a trail of breadcrumb memories, which he'd called Helix's Knot, to locate the buried memories. Useful for spies going undercover and for leaning hard on a suspect during interrogation. The pattern of sensory feedback was nearly a textbook Helix Knot. But, unable to access mnemosurgery, he was unable to pull the knot and see what memories it was linked to.  
  
"Do you remember some time you spent with Rewind in the rain?" He asked. His double was back again, quiet again at his bedside. He looked tired, Chromedome noted. There were little bits of grease lodged in his transformation seams. The low gutter in his visor he'd seen in himself when he let himself work too many shifts with Prowl back in the day.  
  
"You'd have to be more specific," his double said. "We've been, we were together a long time. We got caught in a fair number of rain storms."  
  
"I think I might have made a Helix Knot out of some emotionally resonant moment together," he confessed. He described the sensations, resisting the urge to lean over and rub at his knee where the damned throbbing was back again.  
  
"I know exactly what that is," his double said. "We never actually properly courted, me and Rewind. The timing was all wrong. By the time we got around to starting, he was already the center of my world. So our first 'date' was after our acts of devotion. We went to see a local festival on some planet, I've honestly forgotten the name. We nearly missed the shuttle back and I hurt my knees running back in the rain. Ratchet said the water got in the joints and caused a small electrical short in the sensornet. It was a disaster." Chromedome could hear him smile.

  
"What was it like, having a conjunx?" He asked, testing the waters a little deeper. The other him hadn't done any shouting or stomping this time. He'd just showed up and sat, silent with loud hands jittering in his lap.

"He saved my life. He made life worth living." He reached into his subspace and held up a datastick, holding it reverently in his cupped hands. " I think you need to hear this too. I know it's not for you, and it's not from him, not from your him. But I believe he forgives you too and he'd want you to know this."

He looked around and found the plug for the small display in the room. The datastick contained a short video file, which took a moment to load up. As it began to play, he could hear his double whispering along with the words, causing it to echo like a chorus. The video was heartbreakingly short, but he couldn't have borne for it to go longer. When it stopped, his double stepped up to the screen and set it to play again.

"That's what it was like," his double said. "That's what it was like."  
  


* * *

  
Tailgate and Cyclonus helped him move in. It was weird being released from the medibay and into the bright lights of the hallways, but at least there was a wide buffer when you were walking with Cyclonus. He didn't have any possessions, everything of his had disappeared with the other Lost Light. Tailgate took that in stride, cheerily remarking that all they had to do was arrange the berths to their liking and they'd be done. "We'll have to get you some stuff. A couple of curly straws, some good polishing cloths, maybe a heating tarp, copies of your data disks from 1.0. We should have thought to do all that while he was in the medibay, Cyclonus," Tailgate said.

"You're both alright with this?" he asked again, feeling a little lost. Tailgate had been hanging around when Ultra Magnus came by to ask which habsuite to register him for, and he'd caught onto the long hesitation when faced with living alone. Or worse yet, with the other him. And somehow, ridiculously , Tailgate had volunteered to take him on as a second roommate. Cyclonus hadn't objected. Ultra Magnus had grumbled a little about emergency evacuation efficiency and intended room capacity, but he'd entered it into his official directory.

"If I objected, I would not be allowing it," Cyclonus said, keying in the entry code. He unlocked the door, locked it again and then stepped aside to let Chromedome enter the code in himself.

"You can't back out now, CD! I had to rescue that berth from Swerve's room and drag it all the way here. It took forever," Tailgate said, bustling into the room and hopping up on the nearest berth. It was flush against the wall with the monitor , while the other two were against the other wall. "So, where do you want to recharge?"

"Here is fine," he said. "I don't even want to think about recharging again after all that bedrest anyway."

"Okay," Tailgate accepted easily. "I keep my stuff in the little shelf under my berth," he pointed. "You can borrow anything you need from there. There's a washrack down the hall, but we don't have private ones in here. It's pretty quiet, though, I don't think many of the mechs in this hall are interested in hygiene."

Chromedome sat down on the berth next to Tailgate. Now what? "Do either of you have any paint?" he asked, hand drifting to his badge.

"Yes," Cyclonus said. He knelt to access the storage shelf under his berth.

"For his calligraphy projects," Tailgate said. "You're going to be even harder to tell apart from 1.0 if you paint that, you know. That's about the only way I can tell you apart."

"There are older markers of mourning," Cyclonus remarked as he rose with the paint in a tiny stoppered vial and a brush. "Before the war, when fadeout came more rarely, lamentatorem engraved on the faceplate a glyph to recognize those lost. When there was the mine collapse in Tetrahex, the mourners all painted themselves with a glyph for every lost miner, to pressure the local government into acting. Hundreds of names, painted across both arms. Locally in Tetrahex, the tradition of marking lamentatorem as glyphs painted or engraved on the arms or wrists persisted at least until the departure of the first Ark ."

"I don't even know the designations of everyone on board," Chromedome said. "I couldn't possibly calligraph a glyph for each of them."

Cyclonus frowned. "I would not think so. Perhaps this would do." He fetched a plastic sheet from beneath his berth and laid it on the desk, uncapping the paint and then drawing something on the sheet. It took him two kliks to finish, recap the paint and wash the brush off in the little jar of solvent kept on the desk. Chromedome and Tailgate wandered over to look. It was something written in glyphs based on Old Cybertronian.

Cyclonus waited expectantly for someone to make a comment. With none forthcoming, he explained, "It says 'The crew of the Lost Light, faded but never forgotton'. There are subtler translations, the word faded here is also used to mean 'survived by' or 'outlived'."

"You said the arms are traditional placements?" He asked, touching a hand to his chassis again, over his spark casing.

"You, I mean, the other you, keeps getting his arms cut off. Might not be a very permanent location," Tailgate commented.

Chromedome wasn't even going to touch that comment. Clearly waste disposal bots never received the educational program on tact and social nuance. Or else

Tailgate had decided to ignore them. (It had been a surprise to discover Tailgate was waste disposal and not bomb disposal, but the lie seemed generally forgiven on board. The old work castes weren't supposed to matter any more, anyway.)

"If you would like, the chassis is an acceptable alternative," Cyclonus said.

He did not directly offer to paint in the glyphs, but Chromedome could hear it. It wasn't the mark of mourning he had imagined, but at least he could mark his loss without confusing this ship even more. "Please," he said.


	3. Too Long

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's time to rescue Rewind

The weirdest part of stopping time was the quiet. They walked together, boots hitting the ground soundlessly. His double led the way, the spark detector in his hands chiming quietly as it mapped the locations of the crew members around them. He’d hooked the cable from the field emitter around his wrist, anchoring him to Chromedome. As the second person in line, wearing the blasted heavy field generator had fallen to him. Cyclonus brought up the rear, Great Sword unsheathed and glowing.

The narrow corridors of the Peaceful Tyranny, as the D.J.D. had apparently named their ship, were surprisingly clean. It wasn’t as if he’d expected the halls to be strewn with viscera. It was just eerie seeing these monsters live in a state of normalcy. Right off the shuttle they’d had a ping of a minibot energy signature and found a tiny medic, frozen in time. Apparently the D.J.D. had their own personal medic. He wasn’t sure if he should hope she was here as a willing volunteer or as a victim like Rewind. Both options had their share of horror.

They moved on, quickly. They were on the clock, as Percepter had reminded them repeatedly before departure. Besides the medic, they’d stumbled across Helex and Kaon already, recharging in their berths. They could not stop and they could not kill them without risking blowing out the field emitter. Rewind first, he tried to remind himself. Rewind first.

“I’ve got a whole swarm of signatures up ahead. They’re clustered together, maybe maybe four of them? Keep alert,” his double said.

As if he could be more alert. He was on the verge of rattling out of his frame, he was so alert. If someone had told him his energon had been spiked with circuit boosters he might have believed them, the way his sensors were cataloging every tiny detail and flashing it to his brain with panicked alert status.

He glanced back at Cyclonus. He looked the same as ever. Grim, focused, hard to read. He met his gaze and gave a nod, raising the sword in readiness.

His double paused at the doorway, using his gloved hand to ease the door open. He glanced inside and froze, vents shuddering.“Slag,” he whispered.

“He is here?“ Cyclonus asked.

"Yeah. Oh, slag it, we should have fought for a medic. Okay. Okay, it’s going to be fine,” his double muttered.“Come on,” he called back to them, as if they were the ones hesitating in the doorway.

It was some sort of command room. No windows, a table with enough seats to fit all of the crew, monitors to display navigational computer output. Vos and Tarn were sitting at the table frozen midway through a casual drink, from the looks of it. There was a deck of cards out on the table, but it looked like the game had finished earlier.

Rewind was propped up against the corner, projector running. The image was frozen on far the wall, a close shot of Ratchet’s dead body as his spark guttered. His face was splattered with the viscera that had been pulled out of his head along with the brain. Chromedome tore his eyes away from the image and back along the path of the light, lit along the motes of dust to Rewind.

He was awake. He shouldn’t have been _online_. Someone had carefully detached both of his legs and his arms and laid them beside him in an obscene little row, all neatly lined up. Kaon’s pet turbofox curled up in the corner beside him, chain looped over a hook on the wall. Rewind had a chain just like it, hooked to the wall and welded around his neck. They’d cracked open his chassis and run in a fuel line, which Chromedome followed back to the table and to Vos’s fuel ejection port. He recoiled in disgust. There would be almost no energy left in that _waste_.

You could see it in his frame. The starvation gave him a dulled lustre as he greyed out. Even under the dents and scuffs, it made him look strangely brittle. Chromedome’s double knelt, not touching, hands ghosting over his tiny emaciated frame.

“Okay. This could be worse,” he found himself saying. His double sent him a murderous glare and he rushed to clarify. “For extraction, I mean. Cyclonus, we can start by placing the buffer sheets.”

The trick with Preceptor and Brainstorm’s invention was that whatever you touched joined the circuit and them immediately joined you in ‘fast time’. Supporting their shuttle and four bodies, the field would last nearly a mega-cycle of apparent time. If they accidentally brought the whole of the Peaceful Tyranny into the circuit, it’d last another eight kliks at best. Not to mention the entire execution squad suddenly discovering their presence on the ship.

So they were going to have to remove Rewind without directly touching any part of the ship. Preceptor had worked up a polymer that prevented transmission of the field, that’s what the ridiculous boots and gloves were made of. They’d also come with several sheets of the stuff to isolate Rewind from the ship before they brought him into the field. He’d been fantasizing horrible nightmare scenarios where there was no way to extricate Rewind without waking the crew. This was rather on the tame end of his nightmare scenarios.

He was horrified, of course, but he was mostly horrified that he wasn’t _more_ horrified. It would have been upsetting to see anyone abused like this, especially in the clutches of his personal nightmare architects. But he’d entertained the absurd notion that upon seeing Rewind it might all come flooding back. That this abuse would be personal and world-breaking. Instead it was all just a dull roar of horror, barely surfacing above the levels of horror he’d been feeling out in the corridor.

His double, on the other hand, was clearly in shock or something. Cyclonus had swapped his sword to it’s sheath in order to get the buffer sheets out of the carrying tube he had strapped across his shoulder, but his double appeared not to notice, hands still frozen over his Conjunx’s abused frame. Cyclonus did not look to be in a hurry to try and talk sense into him.

Which left it up to him. He knelt by his double’s side and put a hand on his shoulder wheel.“Chromedome,” he said, waiting a nano-klik to get a response before repeating. “Chromedome. We have to move him now. If you can’t help us do that, I need you to step back so we can work.”

No response.

“Chromedome, he’s going to be alright. I just need you to shift back a bit so we can work.”

No response.

Well, frag this. Chromedome hunched down, careful to not let his knees or any other unbuffered bit of kibble touch the ground.Gently, he wrapped his arms around his double’s midsection and walked them backwards a few awkward steps. “I really hope you snap out of this soon, because we can’t carry you _and_ Rewind out of here,” he muttered.

Area finally cleared, he and Cyclonus began the process of isolating Rewind from the ship. Each holding one side of the sheet, they eased a buffer underneath his frame, and then another one behind him, being sure to overlap them slightly to ensure there was no point of contact between raw frame and the wall. Chromedome isolated the little pile of limbs while Cyclonus used a gloved hand to try and detach the fuel line.

After a few times, he made a hissing noise of frustration. “I am unaccustomed to having my points covered like this,” he admitted, holding up a gloved hand that had blunted his claws to the point where he couldn’t undo the latch.

Chromedome stepped over and did it for him. Then they both turned to the choke collar around his neck. Chromedome felt around, but there didn’t seem to be a fastening point - it must have been welded on. And it didn’t unhook from the wall like the pet’s did, as he’d initially assumed. It was welded on that side too.

“We cannot cut it, so we will have to pull it down,” Cyclonus said. “Lean him forward and brace the chain by the base.”

Cyclonus braced one foot against the wall and hooked both hands around the chain. He began to pull, attempting to pull the anchor straight out of the wall. It was only a few kliks before Chromedome realized he wasn’t going to be able to do it. But if he stopped bracing Rewind, his body would fall when the chain snapped and they would make a circuit.

He turned to his double over his shoulder. “Chromedome! If you do not stand up and help Cyclonus we are going to run out of time and we will have to leave Rewind here. ”Slag it, if only Megatron hadn’t forbidden them from taking a medic on this fool’s mission. _I am sympathetic, but we cannot risk the already sparse medical personnel for a rescue mission for someone who is likely already dead._ First Aid could have ported his medical access and cut this shock business in half a nano-klik. “Stand up and help!”

No response. Frikken fragged-up plan.  If they had to carry him they weren’t going to be able to rescue Rewind anyway. They couldn’t do this again. Once the field ran out the D.J.D. were going to see the broken doors and jammed locks and realize someone had broken onto the ship. This was their one shot.

“Stop pulling for a klik, Cyclonus,” he said, leaning Rewind back against the wall.

He walked back over to his double and lifted him fully to his feet.They walked together back to Rewind’s body and he guided his double’s hands to where his had been. “Hold onto him. Don’t let him fall. Okay?”

Linking his hands on the chain above and below Cyclonus’s he braced his foot against the wall and pulled. Slag it, they must have anchored the chain to a strut behind the wall. The chain creaked, and Cyclonus’s hand slid on the chain. His engine revved up in a roar, and Chromedome’s rose to meet it. Something creaked, his hand slid and the whole thing came crashing down.

He recovered his balance in time to stop from falling and Cyclonus grabbed at the metal anchor before it hit the floor. Behind them, a harsh metallic clicking noise started suddenly.

“Rewind!” His double croaked. Apparently the little bot had tipped forwards into his arms.Cycle completed, he’d woken up, only Cyclonus’s lucky catch had saved them from complete disaster.

The clicking noise continued and it finally clicked that it was the sound of a partially disabled vocoder. The way 'disposable’ mechs had sounded back in the day, before the Ambus test, before they were given access to language modules like the rest of them. How _dare_ they.

“It’s okay, Rewind, it’s okay. We’re gonna put you back together, good as new,” his double soothed, hugging Rewind close.

Clearly he intended to be the one carrying Rewind out. That left Chromedome carrying the pile of spare limbs and and end of the chain still around Rewind’s neck, while Cyclonus carried the discarded chassis and cleaned up the buffer sheets and any other traces of their presence.

“Should we bring the turbofox back with us?” Cyclonus asked, gesturing at it with his foot.

“The thing is practically rabid,” Chromedome said, shaking his head. “If the field generator ran out while we’re still in the shuttle and we were trapped in there with it, things could get unpleasant.”

“I am not afraid of a Turbofox,” Cyclonus said, tapping his sheathed sword.

“Well, yes, we could kill it if it was trouble.But that wouldn’t be a very good rescue, would it? Do you want to rescue the little medic too, while we’re at it?”

“I believe there is a difference between willing collaborators and collatoral damage,” Cyclonus said. “But you are right, it is not the mission and we do not have time to waste.”

Chromedome felt a pang of guilt for the little thing, but he was right, he knew it. They didn’t need to be stuck in a tiny shuttle trying to control a feral turbofox while trying to do emergency medicine without a medic present. They were out of their depth and they needed to pick their battles. “Everybody pack up and move out,” he said.

His double didn’t fight him taking control, too preoccupied with trying to find a good way to carry Rewind and attempting to soothe the continuous barrage of vocoder clicking.

They retraced their path back out of the ship. It was still a panicky experience, but with a touch of surrealism, weighed down with a full set of severed limbs. The shuttle had drifted a little on autopilot, but Cyclonus was able to make the jump and steer back to the maintenance port they’d used for access.

The shuttle was a tiny thing with room for one pilots seat and an open standing area; it was designed to be used for drop missions, not long term transport. Luckily, while Megatron had refused to allow any of the ships medics to accompany the rescue team he hadn’t stopped them from helping pack supplies. Chromedome fetched one of the lightweight circuit slabs, the sort that folded to elevate the patient’s head. From there Rewind could sit up, unassisted.The projector was still running, casting a distorted image of Tailgate’s grisly end against the uneven wall of the shuttle. Unsure of what else to do, Chromedome grabbed a piece of cable seal tape and covered up the front of the projector, turning the image to a soft square of light. They weren’t going to be able to do anything about the amputated limbs from here, but the medical priority was going to be fuel.

“Hey,” he said to his double. “I know he’s confused and overwhelmed and you want to deal with the emotional slag first, but he needs to eat.”

His double looked over and boggled as if he’d forgotten for a minute that there were other people on the shuttle.“Right,” he said.“Med-grade?”

“We have plenty,” he said, opening the emergency kit Ratchet had packed up. “Cube and straw or bag and drip line?”

“Fuel levels this low and a tank this contaminated, Ratch is definitely going to have to flush the whole fuel system the minute we hit the Lost Light. We’ll let Rewind decide. Can you handle a straw right now Rewind? Blink your optics once for yes, twice for no.”

Rewind’s visor stayed steadily lit, no blinks. “They’ve done a medical override of optical input control,” he said after a beat. “Just like they did with the vocoder.” They ended up going with the drip line because it didn’t appear Rewind could activate any mouthplate controls. After that was settled, there was suddenly no medical emergency to be handled anymore, at least not one they were qualified to detect and handle. They were left with the difficult business of dealing with everything else.

The both of them reached this realization near simultaneously, but the other Chromedome looked at a loss as to how to begin. Chromedome had half a mega-cycle on the trip out to think of what to say, nearly ten days on the ship to think of anything to say. In the moment, everything he’d come up with felt half-hearted and wrong, so he improvised.

He went to one knee.“Hello, Rewind. It’s good to finally meet you,” he said.“I’m sorry to do this when you can’t talk back, it feels unfair to you. I babble when I’m nervous. But you know that, don’t you? I’m told we used to know each other really well.” He lifted a hand up to the glyphs painted on his chest.

Haltingly, he explained the existence of the second Lost Light, where everyone was alive. “They saved me. But they can’t fix the memories, see? The brain damage makes me immune to mnemosurgery. So I am sorry, but I will never remember you. But someone else does.”

He motioned over his double, who approached hesitantly. “This is also Chromedome. He’s just like me, if I’d fallen asleep a solar cycle ago and dreamed up a whole other set of adventures on the Lost Light. His Rewind faded, doing something brave and stupid and saving the whole ship, if I understand correctly. And it’s broken all the laws of reality for this to happen, but the two of you have a second chance.”

The phantom sensation of rain was back, roaring in his audials. He stood up and went over by the pilot’s seat with Cyclonus to give them some space. He faced the starfield in front of them and did not look back.

“You are making a great number of assumptions about what Rewind does and does not want,” Cyclonus commented in a low voice. “And, more importantly, about _who_ he does and does not want.”

“I stopped deserving him months ago, when I did this to myself,” he said, gesturing to the back of his neck.

“Sometimes you are given more than you deserve.” Cyclonus said.

 

* * *

 

As predicted, the entire medical team was waiting for them in the shuttle bay. Red Alert and Ratchet got Rewind onto a mobile circuit lab in under ten nano-kliks of the bay doors opening. “Walk with me and tell me everything you know,” Ratchet commanded. The shuttle crew gamely followed after him, Chromedome’s double filling in most of their medical assumptions.

The hallways were weirdly empty. Chromedome thought he’d seen Whirl at the far end of one hall, but other than that the path from the shuttle bay to the medbay, near halfway across the ship, was entirely clear. Who had organized such a thing? And, a better question, who was enforcing it? Such blessings did not happen by chance.

They were whisked into the medbay, itself empty except for the long-term offline patients. Chromedome and Cyclonus hung back by the door, while his double lurched to near the circuit slab they were transferring Rewind to, hovering just out of the range where Ratchet would start snapping about mechs underfoot. They must have prepared this circuit slab for Rewind in advance, he realized. For all along the berthside table there were tiny vials of energon. He got to thirty, lost count and started over, then lost count again. Some were vials in the old style, gentle twisting things of glass that echoed the circular iris of aspark casing. Some were whatever the honorer could find lying around - old medical vials, colored glass collectibles, biological sampling cases. A few were newer commercial designs, probably purchased special in some grand marketplace on recent shore leave. A few were _old_ , energon dimming with age and exposure to light, gifts that had been laid at _their_ berthside years ago. His spark ached. No one had left an offering for him when he awoke. And, more importantly, his dry spark could never return the favor.

“Spark diminished, but holding stable. Rewind, I’ve got the sensor block installed. You shouldn’t be able to feel anything from here on out. We’re going to have to flush your fuel lines and replace a lot of the cabling and it _is_ urgent. But you’re not on the brink of burnout, so I’m going to fix your vocalizer first, okay?” Ratchet had wheeled a short stool over to the beth, which he raised up with a foot pedal. He waved one of the medical drones over and unspooled a connection cable from it. “The drone is going to monitor your vitals and record any anomalous programming, so that First Aid can check back over my work later and make sure I didn’t miss anything. _I_ am the only one who’ll be doing any control input.” Ratchet hooked his monitoring cable to the bot and then the connecting cable to a medical port near Rewind’s main fuel intake.

It took him a few moments to settle into the code. “Well at least they didn’t try and make it hard to fix,” he muttered after a moment, optics distant as they focused on whatever he was seeing on his HUD. “But slag it, that little monster didn’t leave a single system untouched. Vocalizer control first…”

Rewind had quieted after they’d gotten into the shuttle, unable to communicate meaningfully with only the low power clicking and hissing. But now it started back up again, the clicking turning into a hacking series of static. Chromedome edged towards the door. This was private and probably embarrassing and nobody needed him ogling. The static turned to a stuttering series of phonemes that ended in a loud hiss of frustration.

“It’s okay, your vocalizer was shut down for a long time. Let it warm up and try again. You’ve got plenty of time,” First Aid said reassuringly from where he was prepping cable lines.

“I-dsskrt,” Rewind shook his head at the static. “I. Do. Krssssk-not. Have. Time. He's getting away.” He swallowed a few hissing sounds and continued, “Don’t let that Chromedome leave.”

Everyone turned to stare at Chromedome and Cyclonus shifted slightly to be standing between him and the doorway. “He is not going to leave,” Cyclonus said.

“Good. Slag, this was easier in my head.” Rewind said over the low rumble of static. “Okay. We’re doing this in short words, 'cause I can’t seem to-slag it, stop that!”

“Just wait a klik and let it finish warming up. None of the rest of you move, clearly Rewind has something he needs to tell you,” Ratchet said. “I’m going to switch to working on autonomic control of your camera and visor, alright?”

Rewind nodded and Ratchet went back to work. Chromedome stood awkwardly, fidgeting from pede to pede as he waited. This wasn’t supposed to happen, he really hadn’t planned for this.

It was stupid, he supposed. But when everyone had explained the Quantum engine malfunction and how it had righted itself with the disappearance of his ship and everyone on board, he’d assumed his days were numbered. That there was something holding him back from disappearing, but once that was settled he’d get to go with the rest of his ship. Like a spark-haunting from a youngling’s scary story. And then the obvious answer had been Rewind. This ship was missing a Rewind. Once Rewind was reunited with his Conjunx everything had been put back to rights and there was no need for him any more.

He hadn’t planned on having to live with this.

“Okay, that should be enough time. Try again,” Ratchet said.

“Thank you, Ratchet,” Rewind said. His voice was still shaky, with an undertone of static, but he was clear enough to hear. “I need to talk to both of the Chromedomes. Come over here, you two.”

Chromedome walked over, stepping up to stand a pace behind his double. Rewind turned to look at them both, projector finally turned off, visor blinking a few times.

“I have a lot I need to say to you both, more than Ratchet is going to let me say right now. And I’m going to need time to decide what I’m going to do with this _incredibly_ weird situation we’ve all found ourselves in. But I know you. Both of you. You self-hating, know-it-all stubborn…if I let you leave, at least one of you is going to do something unspeakably stupid. I’m going to fall into recharge the minute I let my guard down, but I need you both to promise you’ll stay here with me until I wake up.”

Rewind waited expectantly and as the silence grew more awkward, Chromedome felt forced to break it, before Ratchet could start giving advice. “I promise I’ll stay.” _Though I don’t know why you’d want me here_.

“I will stay as long as you’ll have me,” the other Chromedome said.

“Okay.Good. Good. That was the important thing. All of you, and Cyclonus, you too-” his visor blinked off for a second. It restarted with a few flickers, accompanied by a sleepy hum. “Thank you for coming to get me.” He finished, before blinking out again.

“Is he okay?” Chromedome’s double asked worriedly.

“He’s tired.They’d coded him into emergency response state permanently, to stop him from forcing himself into shutdown, or maybe just to torture him by stopping him from recharging. It’s gonna frag up his sleep cycle, but honestly, it’s pretty low on the list of things I’m worried about.”

Ratchet disconnected from the medical port and turned to look at them. “Alright, Cyclonus, I think you’re free to go. You two, I need you to back up a bit and give me and First Aid space to work. This is the bit where it gets messy. Feel free to make up one of the berths in the recovery room, use the washracks, maybe do some reading, you know, whatever. You don’t have to watch this and I honestly would recommend you not.”

Cyclonus signaled him. “I will be back in our room. Contact me via comms if there’s anything you need.”

“Of course. Thanks.”

Cyclonus left and that left him alone with his double and a Ratchet who seemed in a hurry to get him out of the way.

So he went and he washed off, and in the limited privacy of the medbay’s attached washrack he let the sound of rain overwhelm the sound of the solvent spray coming from overhead. He let himself sink down on aching knees.He let his visor overheat and then to overflow in the cold spray. And he allowed himself two and a half kliks to grieve.

After that there was nothing left but the awkward waiting game. He retreated to the room that his double had chosen for them. The berth was spacious; big enough to fit two mechs, maybe three, if you squeezed. There were a few chairs in the corners, one of which was already occupied by his double, staring blankly down at a data pad sitting across his lap. He really had nothing to do, he wasn’t reading anything of substance at the moment. And he hadn’t brought anything with him anyway. So he sat down and he listened to the rain. And he envisioned scenarios for the future: hopeless, impossible things.

At some point, when the blank wall was turning into static in his head and blending with the rain and he was starting to think about that berth and sinking into recharge just to escape the boredom, his double spoke up.

“I never said thank you,” he said. “I thought I could handle it, but I froze up. You got us both out of there, you and Cyclonus. So thank you.”

“It was nothing,” he said.

“No it wasn’t. You saved us and, more importantly, him. I know you think that just because I can remember he’s going to choose me. But you’re going to need to wait and see. Because if there’s anything unappealing, it’s settling down with a man who let you die. He might decide he hates us both.”

“I’m not really in the mood to have a self-loathing measuring competition,” Chromedome admitted.

“Neither am I,” his double said. “But I feel horribly unwelcome and out of place right now, and seeing as our brains have four million years of shared history? I took a leap of faith and guessed you were feeling something of a kind.”

At some point he must have slid into recharge, because someone roused him by rapping him on the shoulder. “What are you doing sleeping sitting up? Get on the berth." That sounded like a good idea. It was warm there. He awoke once more during the sleep-cycle and for a moment forgot he wasn’t in his room, looking for Cyclonus and Tailgate in the darkness. But the sound of fans humming in sleep lulled him back off again.


	4. In The Morning and What Came Next

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've got some non-linear storytelling in this chapter, because I literally couldn't figure out how to start. I did edit it in chronological order, so everything _should_ work. Hopefully it's not super confusing.

**\+ 3 hours**

"Keep your fragging needles away from him!" Chromedome hissed, keeping a hand on each of his double's wrists, pressing them to the floor.

"I'm not trying to jump him! Primus! Rewind, I was just offering-"

"Getitout. Getitout. Getitout-"

"-see what I mean? He's obviously in distress. There is no clinical or practical reason why he needs to live with remembering any of that. You're just freaking out because of the social stigma."

"He's having a panic attack, not giving you consent, you gearstick. Stay _down_ and let me help him." He let go and waited a beat to see if his double would try to immediately jump him. No movement, so he took the chance to get back on the berth and talk to Rewind again.

"Hey, hey," he said, taking hold of Rewind's tiny hands where they appeared to be trying to bodily pull the camera from his head. "If you want it gone, it's gone, but it's bolted on. We'll have to get a wrench. You're here, you're safe. Nobody is going to try and mess with your memories and nobody is going to touch you, not while I'm around."

It took a few kliks for Rewind to regain vocalizer control, but when he did he immediately dropped his hands. "Please? I hate that I hate it. I loved this camera and they've twisted it. I keep thinking about it and every time it sets me off."

"Rung would probably say that's a reasonable and fair reaction to trauma," Chromedome said, checking the sizing of the bolts. "Or he would if you would let him in."

"Not pressuring, remember?" Rewind gritted out. "And you, over there? I do not want you doing mneomosurgery on me, in case I wasn't perfectly clear the first three times. I'm scared and I'm messed up but I am not compromising my principles over this."

"Sorry," Chromedome said.

His double took a little longer to echo him. "I'm sorry. I'm just-I understand the social stigma, and I get that you don't like what injecting has done to my health. But it feels like a valid option here? I can understand not wanting to forget the crew dying, but everything after is just gratuitous."

"Chromedome," Rewind said. "I said no. I don't have to explain."

He finally found a wrench that matched in the little repair kit he kept in subspace. He checked it up against the bolts and yep, that would do it. "Rewind, camera off or on?" he asked.

Rewind froze, then vented harshly, gripping his knees as he curled in on himself. "Off please. The interface is pretty simple, you should be able to just unplug it."

"Okay then." He laid one hand over Rewind's in what he hoped was a comforting gesture. Then he started on unbolting the little camera-projector unit from Rewind's helm.

"It was a gift," his double said, sitting up. He was staring at them, hands clenched in his lap.

"Was it," Chromedome said. He dropped another bolt onto the berth with a plink.

"It was," Rewind said, locking eyes with his double. "And I loved it. It gave me purpose and it gave me joy. But not right now."

Chromedome lifted the camera away and cradled the tiny thing in his hands. It was surprisingly heavy for something so small. "Should I keep it for now? In case you want it back."

Rewind shuddered at the thought, but said, "Let _him_ keep it for now. He'll keep it safe."

The camera went into a box that First Aid found lying about, that had come with a shipment of laser scalpels. His double hurried out to stash it away somewhere safe, clutched the box to his chest.

 

* * *

**\+ 9 hours**

Swerve's looked about the same. If you squinted, and preferably if you were _drunk_ and then you squinted. Theirs hadn't had a legislator as a bodyguard. And it certainly wasn't so loud about existing, for fear of Captain Ultra Magnus changing his mind and shutting the place down. And they'd redecorated some. And there was the lack of dead bodies, a definite aesthetic plus. Slag, every time he went somewhere new on the ship that was the first thing he thought of. Who died there on his ship. Okay, okay, back to factual differences between the bars. Well, he'd never seen Cyclonus at Swerve's before. And certainly not at a table with Whirl.

Who was just the bot he was looking for.

The good thing about people trying to avoid you was it maked walking across the crowded bar floor at Swerve's possible, even if there were drunks wrestling on the floor and too many people and an elaborate game of darts being played with throwing knives. People just magically moved out of the way. He pushed through to what he rapidly realized was actually Tailgate's table. Cyclonus was there to drink in silence in Tailgate's company and Whirl was there to talk Tailgate's audials off with some elaborate story about his heroism.

"Chromedome!" Tailgate said, grabbing upon him as a means to cut off the story, which had probably been going on a very long time. Cyclonus had finished his drink, for one thing. From experience watching him drink in their habsuite, Chromedome knew that watching Cyclonus drink was like watching a glacier melt. There was eventually a perceptible difference in volumes, and you were sure he _was_ drinking, but you might fall asleep before he finished. "Oh, other Chromedome! You guys still need to think up nicknames so we don't get you confused. What about just splitting it up? He could be Chrome, you could be Dome. How about that?"

"I am not going to walk around calling myself 'Dome'. All the best names may be taken, but that is especially terrible. I'm keeping Chromedome. He can get a nickname if it bothers him. Actually here to talk to Whirl for a second, I don't want to be gone too long."

"How is Rewind?" Cyclonus asked, painfully formal.

"He's-I don't know. Physically, he should make near a full recovery. Ratchet said that his spark will always be a little weaker from the starvation. And he keeps falling into recharge mid-sentence and losing his train of thought, we don't know how long that's going to last. But I'm mostly worried about his mental health."

"Being powerless. It's a hard thing to get away from," Cyclonus commented, running a claw around the inside edge of his glass.

"Yeah, yeah, you're feeling chatty today Cyclonus," Whirl said. "But the Ghostie said he wanted to talk to me."

"Whirl, he's not a ghost," Tailgate said. From his tone of voice, Chromedome was getting the feeling this was a conversation they'd had before. "He's just a different Chromedome."

Well, this was Whirl he was talking to. He had to be assertive if he wanted to get anything done and pretend his armor was made for full combat if he didn't want to get hurt. "Okay, yeah, actually that is not what I wanted to talk about, but why not? Whirl, I trust you not to lie to me. Why is everyone on this ship besides these two avoiding me, and how can I make sure they _don't_ do that to Rewind?"

"Um, avoid you? We're not avoiding you, have people been avoiding you?" Whirl babbled, scratching the back of his head with one claw. "Or at least, I don't think there's a conspiracy about it. I've been busy and-you and me, we've never been all that close, I didn't figure you'd want to see me. Maybe everyone thought the same thing?"

"Or?" Chromedome prompted.

"I think it's the death thing," Whirl said. "You saw me die, yeah?"

"I saw you die."

"Well I've got a real complicated and confusing relationship with that idea and avoiding you is a great way to avoid having to think about my problems. Now, I can't say everymech on this ship is thinking the same way I am...oh boy, that would that be a scary thought, but probably a lot of them, yeah."

"Well, they need to get over it," Chromedome said. "Rewind needs to meet these mechs and see that they're real and they're not dead and he's not going to be able to do that sitting alone in a room with two fragged up versions of his Conjunx. He needs support and he needs friendship and I know there are mechs on this ship that were his friends. I just don't know who, on account of having been created in an engine malfunction."

Whirl nodded, head bobbing a few times as he thought. "Right, right. Well the little guy doesn't deserve that. Come on, then," he said, dragging Chromedome behind him as he sauntered up to the bar. Swerve caught his eye and then looked away, carefully polishing a glass behind the bar and ignoring Whirl as he climbed up on top of the bar and pulled Chromedome up after him. He let Whirl pluck the glass from his hand with a minimal amount of protest. Whirl lifted it carefully, balanced delicately in a giant claw, and then winked his optic at Chromedome before letting the glass go, sailing down, down to the floor.

It shattered in a perfect, crystalline spectacle. Everyone froze and looked over at them.

"Hey," Whirl said, slopping a bit to the left. He seemed more than a little sloshed himself. He straightened up and tried again, projecting loud enough that Ultra Magnus could probably hear them from out in the hallway where Chromedome had seen him inspecting safety lights. "Hey, all you drunks and rejects, I got something to say. Chromedome over here's been telling me that you're all avoiding him."

He looped a gangly arm over Chromedome's shoulder. "And hey, I get that. But we're not throwing them out the airlock, so you all are gonna have to get used to them being here. So, starting...now...you all have three megacycles to get off your aft and go give Rewind a get well message in person. Elsewise I'm gonna have to drag you there myself, and won't that be fun?" Whirl leered at the crowd. "And Chromedome here promises they won't make it weird and talk about you dying, so it's gonna be just fine. Fun for the whole family. Come on, Ghostie, let's get squiffy."

They climbed down from the counter and Whirl ordered two Bezerker Buttons, which Swerve adamantly refused to give him, citing a previous drunken rampage. Whirl was talking him down to some Old Corroder when Chromedome interrupted him. "Look, Whirl, I am very grateful for what you just did. But I can't get drunk right now, Rewind's expecting me back."

"What?" Whirl said, lifting a glass in each hand. "I'm not buying you a drink, Ghostie. This is all for me, as a reward for my good deed of the day. Damn; I'm handsome, generous and a good sport. I even impress myself sometimes."

They walked back over to Tailgate's table as the noise in the bar rose back up from terrified silence to it's familiar companionable roar. "I actually got a bit sidetracked there," Chromedome said. "That wasn't what I'd come to Swerve's to talk to you about. You used to be a watchmaker, right?"

"Best in the business, at least in my neck of the woods. Which is to say, the only watchmaker in the business in my neck of the woods, but I was still pretty damn good," Whirl agreed good-naturedly.

"I bet people were always bringing random scrap for you to repair, not just watches."

"Oh, all the time. I got pretty good at skycycle repairs and fixing up antique memorial displays after awhile."

"I thought so. In that case, there's one more favor I'd like to ask of you. For later, when you're sober."

 

* * *

**\+ 8.5 hours**

"I'm not saying I'm angry at you. I'm saying I literally do not know how I feel," Rewind said, leaning up against Chromedome's double as they sat side by side on the berth. "He's me. But he's not me. Just like you're him," he nodded at Chromedome, "but you're also you."

Chromedome fidgeted in the corner, deeply uncomfortable with the direction this conversation was heading. He'd heard his double try and explain all the ways _his_ Rewind's death had been his fault, though luckily not in too much detail. He didn't like it. He didn't like thinking about what _he_ would have done in his place, whether he would have done the same things and made the same mistakes. It was unsettling. They were so similar sometimes that it was effortless to pick up his double's guilt but nigh impossible to put it back down. They'd both been cornered by Prowl about Overlord. He'd just had the good grace to get nearly killed before someone could talk him into participating in that suicide pact.

"Before we could be anything more than friends, maybe even incredibly emotionally awkward acquaintances, I'm going to need to know what happened to him. He's dead now, but I'm here. And that makes him my responsibility."

His double sighed. "I don't want to tell you. I'm not saying I won't, I mean. I just-I don't want to lose you too."

"You don't have me," Rewind reminded him. "You will no more or less have me after you tell me what happened. But I need to know."

"Do you guys need me here?" Chromedome asked hesitantly.

"Oh. No, sorry. This should be a private conversation," Rewind realized. "You have somewhere you can go?"

"I'm living with Cyclonus and Tailgate at the moment, I can check in and see how they're doing."

"Okay. You'll be back though, right? And you'll remember what you said.?"

"I'll be back. I'll give you both some space - three cycles. But if you need me sooner just comm me. And yeah, I gave you my word. I know, historically speaking, I've lied a lot. Even to you. But not about this. So yeah, I'll be back."

He was nearly out the door before he thought of something else he needed to say. "And Chromedome? Don't forget to show him the tape. It's important."

 

* * *

**\+ 0**

He woke up pushed to the very edge of the berth, one arm dangling off and touching the floor. He didn't want to wake anyone up by bumbling about, so he lay still and waited. He turned his head and took in the scene. Rewind was curled up in the center of the berth, legs and arms pulled into a tiny defensive ball. There was fresh weld mesh protecting each of the surgical attachment points, but his color was better. He still had that brittle, fragile look about him though. Chromedome felt a pinch of fear: what would have happened if one of them had shifted in the night and crushed him? It was irrational, he reminded himself. His recharge shutdown programming was functioning perfectly. He ran a quick diagnostic, just to make sure, just in case.

"Hey," Rewind said, jolting him from his reverie. His voice still fuzzed out a little, either a slow bootup cycle or a sign of a slowly recovering vocalizer. He turned to look over and saw Rewind staring at him with unmasked affection. "Good morning, Domey," Rewind said.

Chromedome froze. _Don't struggle, Domey._ Rewind ignored that, scooting closer to snuggle his helm up against Chromedome's chest. "This isn't our room. Did you get sent to recovery again? You need to stop injecting, I keep telling you, it's going to kill you somday." He said it gently, like he knew Chromedome was going to ignore whatever he said.

"Oh no, Rewind," Chromedome said. "Have your short term memories not come online yet?"

"Mmm? You know how it is. I'm getting older and there's a lot of data in my neocortex nowadays. It takes a few kliks to get it all in order. Did you paint this?" Rewind uncurled a little to trace out the glyphs painted on Chromedome's chest. "Old Cybertronian. Wouldn't have thought it was your style. What does it say? I'm too lazy to translate this early."

"Rewind, please!" Chromedome said, pulling back a bit. "It'll come to you."

Rewind cocked his head, puzzled, still tracing over the glyphs with one outstretched finger. Then he froze, and it was impossible to tell if he'd finally loaded his neocortex or if he'd figured out the translation. "Oh." He whispered it. Chromedome didn't know what to say in response.

"Well that's embarrassing," Rewind said at last. "Starting out with reminding you I'm practically an antique. I guess we should start over? My name is Rewind of Lower Petrohex. I'm a historian and an archivist and I've been working with the Autobots for 3.7 million years. I've always been a bit dependent, I get attached to someone and then I lean on them like they're the only person in the world." His optics flared, but didn't start leaking. Chromedome reached out and took his hand and Rewind squeezed back.

"Hey, that's not what I've heard," Chromedome said. "I've heard that you were the backbone holding up your Conjunx Endura. I heard that you never stopped looking for your old Conjunx, even after millions of years. I heard that you are a faithful friend, well liked among the crew and willing to give second chances to bots nobody else would. Should I introduce myself? I'd feel a bit silly, saying all that, I'm sure you already know it."

"Just hold me? Just for now. I know we're basically strangers, Chromedome, but I just need-"

"We're not strangers," Chromedome said. "We're crewmates, the last of our crewmates. And maybe soon we could be friends." He scooted a little closer and awkwardly curled himself around Rewind's little ball. Rewind took his hand and pulled it closer, draping it over his waist. He shifted so his helm was bumping up against Chromedome's chest and the vibration of his venting made them both shake with a gentle hum. "When I woke up here, nothing felt real. It was days before I kept expecting to wake up back there. Cyclonus said keeping close to people helped, so take whatever you need."

"I don't think you or anyone else can give me what I need," Rewind said sleepily. "But thank you for trying."

 

* * *

**\+ 1 hour**

"Why aren't they dead?" Rewind yelled. "You just let them do this to me and you left and now I have to live with the fact that they will _always_ be out there. That they could _always_ come back and-"

"We couldn't kill them," his double dully. This wasn't the first time around this conversational black hole. "If we touched them, the whole ship would have come into the circuit, they would have woken up and then we would have all died."

"And what if you shot them?"

"Same thing."

"And what if you put one of those buffer things under their feet, isolated them from the ship and _then_ shot them?" Rewind said, uncurling from his ball just enough to glare at them. "What about that?"

Chromedome tried to think of a reason why that wouldn't have worked and got stuck. "That might have worked," he admitted. "We didn't think of it. We were busy saving you."

"Great. Thanks. Great job, team," Rewind said. "Well, give me a few minutes and I'm ready to go back and finish the job."

"I don't think the captain is going to let us go again," Chromedome said. "He barely let the three of us go and get you."

"Well tell Rodimus he's being a gearstick and let's go," Rewind said

"The captain is Megatron," his double said. "Technically. On Prime's orders."

"Oh." Rewind said, sounding small. "Oh. Oh, well that's wonderful. Is Rodimus dead here too?"

"No, they're co-captains," Chromedome said. "But there's no way Megatron is signing off on us going to kill the DJD."

"Don't you care?" Rewind asked, vocalizer cracking. "You remember what they did to Tailgate. You remember what they did to Ratchet and Drift and Hound. And Pipes! How can you just sit there? I've spent the past six months promising every moment of every day that if I could take even one of them with me, I would do it. And you won't even, from the safety of this ship, admit you want them dead?"

"I want them dead. I want them to suffer the way all of our friends did. Worse. I want them to suffer the way _you_ did," Chromedome promised. "But I don't want that bad enough to risk losing you."

"I lost you! I already lost you. I lost you and then they killed you and I lost you again. I had nothing left and I couldn't die and I just want them to _suffer_."

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry I did it. I know it's not a real apology, I don't even remember doing it, but I feel like I need to say it. I should never have erased you-"

Rewind sat up and reached out a hand for him. "Hey, no. No, no, no. I don't want you to apologize for that. I want you to apologize for a lot, but not that. I _asked_ you to do it. I _begged_ you to do it. They said they'd let us both live, if only you'd just-" his vocalizer caught again and he vented in and out a few times to regain his composure. "You refused. You just refused. But then they threatened to kill _me_ if you wouldn't and, that was it, that was what it took."

Chromedome scooted closer and, after Rewind leaned into his first hesitant touch, moved close enough that Rewind was curled up against his side. Rewind scooched over so his helm was resting on his leg.

"I'm so scared," he admitted. "I've always been the one who protected you from yourself. Both of you. And right now, I'm not strong enough to do it. I'm just tired. And scared. And I'm scared the minute I let go of this anger, I'm going to find out it's the only thing holding me up."

"You don't have to be strong right now," Chromedome said, leaning over to pull him into a hug. "We're going to do it for you, as long as you need. I don't know how, but I'm going to make it happen."

"We're not going to do anything stupid," his double promised. "And I said it before, but I'll say it again. I'm here as long as you will have me. I know you don't feel the same way about me that I do about you, at least not right now. But I love you."

His double lingered on the outside of the hug until Rewind made a little growling noise and said, "Well, join the hug then, okay?"

It was weird and awkward, hugging this tiny stranger he had forgotten his oaths to and also himself. "You deserve so much more than us," Chromedome said quietly. "So much more."

"I hate this. I hate feeling helpless. I just want Domey back. My Domey. And that's unfair and I'm sorry for saying it out loud, but it's the truth. I want him back."

_I feel ya, little guy. I do too._

* * *

**\+ 10 hours**

"Whoah." He reached over and grabbed Tailgate before he could tip over. "Tailgate, buddy, if you fall and hurt yourself, Cyclonus is going to _murder_ me. I said I'd walk you home safe."

"Nah, he wouldn't do that," Tailgate said, happily tapping away at the codelock. "He likes you. I think?" The door unlocked and Tailgate lurched inside, swaying on his tiny pedes. A little _too_ much fun had been had at Swerves. Whirl was willing to keep the drinks coming if you were willing to keep listening to him prattle. Tailgate was a very little bot with low engex tolerance.

"You think?" Chromedome asked, following Tailgate in. He wanted to grab that data disk on pre-War history, focusing on social analyses of the lower classes. Ever since that incident with Rewind that morning he'd been scared that maybe in erasing Rewind he'd inevitably ended up erasing some of his base knowledge about the old order and systems of oppression. Better to make sure than to mess something else up later. Also, he promised Cyclonus he'd make sure Tailgate made it safely back to his berth, and that included navigating the little ladder.

He made sure to hold the ladder steady while Tailgate toddled up it. They were detachable, minibots had to pick them up from the storeroom and bring them to their habuites. The price of making berths one-size-fits-all - the little guys physically couldn't get on their berths without jumping. "Oh yeah," Tailgate said. "He likes you. In the evening, after I said you could share our room, Cyclonus said, and I quote, 'The room seems large enough for three.' That's practically an endorsement."

Come to think of it, if there was anyone on this ship that was good at friendship, it was Tailgate. And he had experience dealing with friends who were _terrible_ at friendship. Chromedome sat down on his berth, setting the data disk aside for a klik. "Tailgate, I need some advice?"

"Yeah, oh good, I'm great at advice," Tailgate said, more than a little overcharged.

"When, you said you had Cybercrosis, right? But you got better. When you were sick, what did you want our of your friends?"

"I didn't tell them," Tailgate said bluntly. "I didn't want my last days with them to be them pitying me. I already felt helpless, I didn't want anyone making me feel _more_ helpless. I told Cyclonus, though."

"And what did he do?"

"Um, he told me hope is a lie and that I should resign myself to dying," Tailgate said, laying back and twiddling his fingers. "Which sucked. I mean, he wasn't wrong. Cybercrosis, up to the moment we cured it, _was_ always fatal. But it sucked. I didn't want him to pity me, that's why I told Cyclonus and not anyone else. But at first I didn't realize he cared, because he didn't _say_ he cared. It's hard to read him sometimes."

"I can imagine that."

"But I figured it out later. He was glued to my side. And when I was waiting to die, he was right there. After awhile when he didn't leave, I realized that _that_ was how he was going to say he loved me. Liked me. I think it's about the same to him? But maybe don't stab Rewind through the spark unless you've got a magic sword."

"Well that's not quite my problem, but thank you for the advice," Chromedome said.

"Nooo, I wanted to help. What is your problem, I can fix it," Tailgate said, flopping over to look at him.

"I don't think anyone can _fix_ it. I'm not Rewind's Chromedome, not really. I can't remember him, but he's still in love with me. And the other guy, he's not Rewind's Chromedome either, Rewind doesn't remember _him_. And I just want him to be happy, but I don't know how to do that? And I'm scared I'm going to say the wrong thing and I'm going to hurt him."

"Uh-huh. I think that's what love is, CD. Have you asked what Rewind wants?"

"I don't want to push. I fragged up trying to talk about it yesterday and I don't want him to think we're only there because we're waiting like vultures for him to announce who he wants. I've been trying to focus on the right-now."

"Chromedome, that's what you need to do. Be there. Ask what he needs. Do that thing, unless you don't want to do that thing. Maybe talk to Rung? But yeah, I think you're scared because he loves you and you don't love him? But then it sounds like you _do_ love him. So you're going to need to think about your feelings, I guess. And when you're both ready, you'll need to talk to Rewind about them."

"Thanks Tailgate," Chromedome said, but apparently Tailgate had dropped off immediately after making that speech, huffing gently in engex-induced rechage. Chromedome gathered up his disk and stepped carefully to the door and out into the hallway, where he nearly ran face first into Cyclonus, standing awkwardly by the doorway. He looked...he looked...Chromedome wasn't sure he'd ever seen that particular expression on the mech's face and he wasn't sure how to place it. How much had Cyclonus overheard?

"Thank you for seeing Tailgate back to the room," Cyclonus said in a low voice, then slipped around him to head back into the habsuite, letting the door close behind him. His pedes were as quiet as Chromedome's had been. Given his size and frametype, that sort of measured silence was an act of focused concentration. Chromedome stared at the door and wondered.

 

* * *

**\+ 3.5 hours**

"So now's your chance, I guess," he said, eyes on the wall. "While he's gone, I mean. What have I done that you don't want to yell at me about in front of him?"

Rewind frowned with his eyes. "I'm not, I don't want to start over again and the first thing you learn about me is how petty I can be." He curled a little closer. His weight on Chromedome's arm had caught a nervecircuit against a plate and it was sending out absent sensations, like cold ice running up and down his fingers.

"I don't think you're being petty," Chromedome said. "I think that, me and him? We both get stuck in our own heads. And I don't want to hurt you without even knowing I'm doing it."

Rewind hummed in acknowledgement and then went silent. Chromedome looked over to check and see if he'd drifted back off again. They'd refueled twice this morning, under Ratchet's watchful eye. The dressings were removed, leaving only the faint marks of weld lines, but Rewind was still on bedrest. Not least because he kept losing track of conversations and falling invountarily into recharge. But he didn't look to be sleeping yet, just thinking.

"I know you've said you're not going to leave me. But I keep hearing what you said on the shuttle. You sounded like you did when we first met. When you couldn't walk past a Relinquishment Clinic without eyeing it as an possible escape. I can't live with the fear that the moment you're out of my sight you might be planning to offline yourself. I'm not strong enough to stop you right now."

"Oh, Rewind." He shook his head and tried to imagine the moment. "I didn't want it to come out like that. I'm not feeling suicidal. I just, I thought you wouldn't want to be with _me_ when _he_ was there, ready to comfort you. I give you my word, I'm not going to hurt myself." _I don't want to die. Not right now. Not anymore._ How could he, when Rewind was right there, having faced everything he had and worse but still carrying on? And trying to carry his pain right with him?

"That's the other thing," Rewind said. "But I don't want to tell you what you did unless you promise not to apologize."

"Umm?"

"If you apologize, I'm going to feel like I have to forgive you. And I don't want to forgive you right now. I just want you to know you fucked up. I want to feel angry. I feel like I deserve that, at least."

He swallowed down how unfair that felt. Damn, how had they ever been in a relationship without breaking each other into little bitty pieces over the years? If he didn't know what he'd done, he might do it again and hurt Rewind even worse. "Okay, I promise. What was it?"

"What you said when you introduced him? It made me feel like you were giving me away. Not just like you were abandoning me. Like I was a gift, a thing you could give to him," Rewind said tonelessly.

Rewind, as a former 'disposable', would have been intimately familiar with that feeling. Even before what he'd just gone through, that would have been inexcusable. He ran back over what he'd said and tried to see it from Rewind's perspective, recognizing immediately the point where he'd fragged it up. He bit back an apology, an excuse and another excuse. He'd known Rewind would need comfort and his double was right there ready to give it. He'd expected to not be around much longer. He hadn't even thought about how Rewind would _hear_ it.

"Okay, I can't apologize. What _do_ you want me to do? What can I do for you, right now?"

"Just stay? And hold me. I know we're still strangers-"

"Somehow, unbelievably, everyone tells me someone loved me. And then I meet him and he says he needs me. Even if you change your mind tomorrow, I'll have had this," Chromedome said, surprised at his own sincerity. "I still believe you deserve better. But what the other guy keeps saying? As long as you want me here, I'm here."

 

* * *

**\+ 28 hours**

"Not like that! Jeez, for a guy with literal needles in his hands, you have the clunkiest fingers I've ever seen. Hands off the prism and I'll walk you through it again."

Chromedome groaned and sat back, again, for the fifth time. When he'd asked for Whirl's help, he hadn't expected him to get so...enthusiastic. Or exacting, specific and Ultra Magnus-like. He looked at the diagram of the internals of a 'solid, classy, antique-type' camera Whirl had brought up on his monitor. The prism was exactly where he'd put it.

"I cannot see any difference," he admitted.

"Well just imagine this project of ours was a brain. There'd be little fiddly bits that look the same but _feel_ different, right? This is like that. Respect the art. That's cool, we can break for a bit, I want to talk about the primary projector lens."

Whirl dragged a box of miscellaneous bits of transparent crystal off of his chair. "We've got a bunch of choices, but I really think you should go with this one." He pointed to a clear, curved piece of crystal that had clearly broken off of something. Chromedome reached into the box and picked it up, careful of the sharp edges. It was thicker than he'd imagined and sturdy looking. He wondered how it'd broken.

"That's your old visor lens," Whirl said, lifting it from his hands with two careful claws. "It snapped when you fell on your face. Ratchet replaced it, but I never let him throw anything away. Been working on a time consuming project of my own and I keep breaking crystal pieces with my damn clunkers," he snapped one of his claws together to demonstrate, "so I've been nagging Ratchet for spares. So yeah, this was part of your face for a couple million years. Or however long you went without getting your lights punched out. So, depending on how ooey-gooey you and the little guy are, you might not want to mention it. But it's perfect for this project. Just the right thickness to polish down to a perfect lens."

"We're going to polish the lens from scratch?"

"Look, Ghostie, if you wanted to buy the little guy a camera off the shelf, you could do that. But if you want me to help you _build_ a camera, we're making a masterpiece. What was wrong with the old one, anyway? It might have been easier to just fix it."

"It wasn't broken," Chromedome said, holding the piece of visor up to the light to see if there were any scuffs on the surface. Of course not. He'd gotten this visor back when he thought he might see heavy combat soon. It'd shatter before it scuffed. "It was haunted."

"Oh. Well, the we wouldn't want Shorty to have to live without his camera, would we? So we're just going to place that prism in, one more time. And you're going to feel for it, like I told you the first five times."

Chromedome picked up the tiny piece between the two needles of his left hand and leaned over their project. It slid into place, just like it had the first five times, but something felt different. It felt right.


	5. Unsteady Equilibrium

The mountains split the landscape in two. To their east the developed land around Asente's sprawling cityscape pulsed with energy. To the west, the forest stood undisturbed. The radioactivity still made them too dangerous for the Asente natives to inhabit and rendered them unfit for industrial use. In the absence of an invading force, the trees had grown tall and the underbrush dense. They did not plan to travel that far, and Chromedome was glad. The trees did not want them there, he felt, and he was unwilling to admit that superstition to the others.

Chromedome and his double were both loaded down with supplies. Rewind, unburdened as they were, had gone ahead of them again. He fairly flew up the path. Every few kliks he would remember his pack animals and slow down for them to catch up, but then he'd be off again. Running ahead, tracing off side trails, circling back. His tiny feet made tracing a clear route over the unsteady rocks easier as well.

"I'd somehow forgotten he gets like this every time," his double said. "Every single time."

"And you didn't warn me," Chromedome said, bomping him on the shoulder.

"Well he's happy, isn't he?" his double said.

Chromedome watched as Rewind swung himself around using a tree branch as an anchor, disturbing a flock of birds. They all lit into the sky in a glorious cloud. Rewind followed them with his camera, body frozen in wonder. He looked freer than he had any time on the Lost Light. Both he and Chromedome's double had pitched the hiking idea as soon as they heard there would be a full two days of shore leave in Asente. He'd been unsure about wandering off into the wilderness instead of sticking to what was a sure bet at fun - staying close to the crew and drinking their way through every mech-friendly bar in the city center. Back during the war empty spaces had been danger. Far from support, far from backup, too many places for ambush to hide out.

They assured him that they had done this several times, even during the war. Closer to base, back then. Not always with permission, back then. But those memories had been swept away, too close to Rewind to survive.

"He looks happy," Chromedome agreed belatedly.

Rewind had waited for them at the bend in the path, tracing a few steps back down to meet up with them. "Did you see the birds?" He asked. "The footage is beautiful. There's so much more nuance in the depth of focus for this camera, I love it."

"If you want something done well, get Whirl to watch you do it," Chromedome said with a shrug. "He's intense about mechanicals, turns out."

"Mm-hmm," Rewind said. He met his eyes, hand wandering back over to the camera, then said playfully, "Don't think I don't notice you trying to dodge that. I'll thank Whirl when I see him. And I'll thank you as many times as I see fit."

"Rewind," Chromedome said, ducking to cover his face with his hands. Rewind had been unbelievably sappy ever since he gifted the camera before touching down in Asente.

"Thank you for the camera, Chromedome," Rewind continued, unmoved. "It, like you, is perfect in every way."

"You ain't getting out of this, CD," his double said, grinning. "Now that he's figured out he's gotten you embarrassed this is gonna keep up all night."

Chromedome had worried his double would be hurt by the replacement camera. The first was had been a gift from _him_ , or so Chromedome assumed. So he'd told him about it beforehand. He had asked to see it, given a few suggestions about improving the projector interface and then suggested gifting it right before the Asente shore leave so Rewind could break it in on their hiking trip. He hadn't seemed particularly upset. 'Mostly, I wish I'd thought of it,' he'd said at the time. 'We'd always talked about getting a better camera if the war ended, it'd taken a few knocks and gotten temperamental over the years.'

"Let's keep going, shall we?" Chromedome said, ignoring them both. "You said we needed to be at the peak by sunset, for whatever we're doing then."

"We're making good time," Rewind said, but he turned around to continue leading them up the path. It wasn't a large mountain, by Cybertronian standards, but the trek from the city center to the base had taken up most of the day. And then Rewind's insistence they climb up on foot was taking longer than he'd imagined. In the morning when they'd planned to finish their hike by sunset he had figured that was overly pessimistic. Surrounded by the unending rocks and foliage of the path it was beginning to feel overly _optimistic_ , whatever Rewind said.

"I think Chromedome's getting bored," his double said. His double was getting much better at referring to him by name without hesitation. They still hadn't switched to a nickname, either of them, although the crew complained incessantly. "We should play Three Things."

"Is this another one of your weird games?" Chromedome asked. Rewind and he had apparently built up a whole repertoire of time killing games to pass the time over the years.

"This one is much easier than 'Prowl and A'," his double assured him. "You just name a person we know, a place and an object. The next person in the circle has to come up with a convincing story explaining how they go together."

"I can start," Rewind said, jumping to lever himself up the side of a large boulder. "Ultra Magnus, oil reservoir, Rodimus's carving knife. You know, the one he uses to doodle on his desk?"

"Um, okay, one second," his double said, stepping up over that same rock. "Easy. Ultra Magnus decides to organize the Captain's office. But he knows that even if he polishes the desk, it's going to get all carved up again. So confiscates the knife and takes it to the oil reservoir to dispose of."

Rewind thought it over. "Why hasn't he done that?"

"Well, he's not Enforcer of the Tyrest Accord any more, I think he's trying to tone it down with the...rules, lately. Anyway, my turn and Chromedome gets to make the story. Optimus Prime, the giftshop on Hedonia, a curly straw."

 

* * *

 

They made it to the peak a little before sunset. From the outlook, they could see the full of the horizon where the trees met ocean and ocean met sky. The threes moved in rippling waves, stirred by a breeze that didn't touch them high on the peak. From above, the ominous and towering canopy had become an ocean of green. The clouds were piled high in lofty stacks, so close you could almost touch them.

"Okay, so we're here. What now?" Chromedome asked, looking around.

"Now we set up camp," Rewind said. "There should be a few thermal tarps to lay down as our base layer."

"Camp?" Chromedome asked plaintively. _Camping_ was what you did when you got trapped away from a base during a skirmish. It wasn't something you did for fun.

"Oh man, did I sound that negative the first time you roped me into camping?" his double asked, chuckling. Chromedome made a mental note to murder him and also to ask him how the heck he made that noise with his vocalizer.

"Worse," Rewind said wickedly. "Chromedome, I promise you're going to like it. Or, you probably will. And if not, it's one night and you never have to do it again. We just didn't tell you because then there'd have been grumbling the whole way up the mountain."

"Why would a mech go camping?" Chromedome asked.

"Why does anyone go camping?" his double replied, laying out their supplies. Rewind took one end of the thermal tarp and began stretching it out, anchoring it down with little gravity clamps. "It's a way to get away from people and spend time with what's important."

"For a race that could live near indefinitely, Cybertronians spend a lot of their time running from one disaster to another," Rewind said. "What's the point of living if you don't actually live? Why travel the stars if you spend the whole time in your room drinking every night? I like to slow down when I can and savor it."

"Now more than ever?" Chromedome asked, leaning over to help stretch out the final corner of the tarp. He imagined himself more of a 'keep busy and repress' sort of person, but if decompressing and slowing down were what Rewind needed, he could learn to adapt. It had only been a few weeks, but he was growing unimaginably fond of the little bot. He and his double had speculated, over a late night drink at Swerves, that maybe removing his semantic memories hadn't removed all the emotional hooks, that there was a scaffolding for him to build on even if he couldn't remember it. Or maybe Rewind was just wonderful? He wasn't sure.

Rewind shrugged. "Yeah, a bit. But more than that, I wanted a little time along with my courting mechs. We're always so busy, trundling from emergency to emergency to appointment to assignment.

"I slept over last night," Chromedome protested, sitting down on the tarp. The insulation stopped the cool of the rocks under them from leeching up through. The view was beautiful, he had to admit.

Rewind sat down, then crawled over to Chromedome and draped himself over his legs, cuddling close. "Maybe I'm just greedy. I wanted more of you both."

His double sat, draping his legs over Chromedome's as well before lying back to look at the sky. "No objections over here," he said blithely.

"Why do we always cuddle on top of Chromedome? I feel like a piece of furniture," Chromedome said, aimlessly petting at Rewind's helm. His double snickered and Rewind clicked happily, but nobody bothered to reply.

Feeling a bit bolder, he traced down from Rewind's helm to his shoulder, then down to the crisp calligraphy lined on either side of the Autobot badge on his back. "Would you be upset if I asked what it said?" he asked, tracing out the brush strokes. Clearly Cyclonus's work, the calligraph was identical to his won in the swell of the curves and the points of the diacritics.

Rewind leaned deeper into his folded arms against Chromedome's leg. It was a pleasant gentle pressure, a 'you're here, this is real'. "It took me awhile to figure out what I wanted," Rewind said eventually. "Cyclonus had opinions, of course. He wanted something traditional and somber. But I don't think this is just for now, just for the lamentarum period. I think I'm going to keep it, so I wanted something that felt right."

"I cannot believe Cyclonus has a secret calligraphy hobby and you were the first one to find out," his double commented, pretending he wasn't glued to Rewind's every word.

"Oh, don't worry, Tailgate knew long before I did," Chromedome said. "So this was what felt right?"

"Mm-hmm. You know, what we were talking about the other day, Disposables used to talk, back in the day. We were powerless in all seneses of the word, but we could still talk. Eventually that channeled into ritual. So there's this thing you would say when you would mention someone who you had known but lost track of - you assumed they were dead, but who really knew? This is a passage from that threnody, translated back into Old Cybertronian."

"Would it be insensitive to say I wish you'd teach me some clickspeak sometime?" His double asked. "I doubt I could do it but I'd love to know some."

"You probably couldn't speak it," Rewind agreed. "It's tough to do with a fully powered vocalizer. But I could speak some for you sometime, if you're interested. It's a kind of crude and ungainly language, I only have it archived for my personal records. Nobody's ever asked about it."

Rewind stilled in concentration, then trilled out a series of clicks, a staccato rhythm that Chromedome wouldn't have recognized as poetry if he hadn't been looking for it. "In Neocybex, the section I have goes 'You deserved to burn till the stars went out; You were robbed of time and of joy. We will carry your memories on our backs; Your names in our mouths; Until we are robbed in turn.' It was the threnody dedicated not just to the dead but the missing, I figured it could count for all of my lost sparks."

"Oh, Rewind," Chromedome said. "It's beautiful."

"You haven't given up on Dominus, have you?" his double asked.

"I won't. But he's most certainly lost. If we ever find him...well, we found him. But till then I have something to remind everyone he existed. Him and Rewind and our crew."

What he'd heard about Dominus had differed wildly between Rewind's account and his double's account in private. From the other Chromedome he would have thought Rewind was planning to leave them both the moment Dominus was found, if by some miracle he ever _was_ found. But from Rewind he had gotten more uncertainty, a mech who didn't know _what_ he would do with three Conjunxes. Not to get ahead of himself or anything, but if the courtship continued in kind he could see acts of devotion in their future. He wasn't sure how he felt about Dominus, left somewhere vague and confused between Rewind's reverential obsession and his double's bitter fear. He should really press them to talk about it sometime, honestly. But this was supposed to be a pleasant outing and he wasn't going to try and have any more unpleasant conversations that night.

"And Cyclonus didn't want to write that?" he asked instead, refocusing on that earlier detail.

"He's very traditional and it isn't a traditional threnody passage. You know how he is, he can be very...unbending. Once we got past that sticking point to the translation bit he got interested. There's a whole art to the calligraphy of Old Cybertronian, in placing double meanings and nuance through the way you shape the glyphs. He seemed delighted, you know, for Cyclonus, to find someone interested in learning about it."

His double said, "I don't know, I think he's been looking happier lately. Not that I used to pay much attention, but he's unwound a lot in the past few weeks. And Tailgate certainly has been more bubbly. Maybe they're finally together?"

"I wouldn't bet on it," Rewind said. "I've never met anyone so traditionally Tetrahexian. But if what they have makes them happy, I guess that's good enough?"

"I cannot believe I care if Cyclonus is happy," his double said. "I used to imagine convenient shuttle bay accidents where he got squished in the bay doors."

"It really is unbelievable," Chromedome agreed. "But, I mean, Megatron is captain and none of us immediately abandoned ship because of all of the slag he's done."

"I've thought about asking to interview him," Rewind admitted. "I don't think he'd agree to it, but I've thought about it. One day that could be incredibly important footage."

His double sat up and stared at him in horror. "Don't you dare. Not without taking one of us as backup, at the bare minimum."

"He wouldn't say yes anyway," Rewind said with a shrug. "Don't worry about it."

The sight of his double trying to forcibly restrain himself from mother-henning Rewind was so funny Chromedome managed to put aside his _own_ horror at the mental image of tiny Rewind alone in a room with Megatron.

They let conversation drift from that to lighter topics as the suns went down, catching the particles in the atmosphere in swales of vibrant colors. The clouds had gathered thicker while they talked, but it wasn't until the suns had both passed below the horizon that Chromedome felt the first drop of rain against his plating.

"Slag it, it's going to _rain_ tonight?" Chromedome said, leaning over to shield Rewind from the nasty stuff. It wasn't that they _couldn't_ get wet, he just didn't like the idea of random gaseous vapor deciding to fall down on them at will.

"Well that's a disappointment, I'd hoped we could get some stargazing in," Rewind said. "I guess we'll have to rig up the upper tarp."

His double produced a second tarp from their bag, this one with several attachment points for cables. He started knotting those up, ignoring Chromedome's plaintive plea that maybe this was a sign from Primus that they should cut the camping short. By the time he'd anchored the tarp to three surrounding rocks Chromedome was starting to actually get wet.

"If we left now we'd get soaked on our way back down to Asente," Rewind said once the rain was safely deflected by their low-tech roof. "And you hate getting wet."

"And you don't?" Chromedome said reaching up to tap at the tarp just above his head. The vibrations sent a rhythmic patter of rain sluicing over the edge.

"I think my frame is better sealed," Rewind said. "Less exposed wheels and attachment points. The rain doesn't bother me unless it's cold. Well, stars or no stars, we'll just have to make the best of this. We packed food, right?"

"Like you didn't watch us pack this morning," Chromedome said. "Of course we packed food. What are your fuel levels like? You were bounding around a lot on the trail."

"I was trying to get good footage, you know how it is. Um, about 19 percent?"

"Rewind!" Chromedome said. "We could have stopped to refuel at any point, you can't just not tell us these things." Internally, he cursed himself for not remembering that smaller mechs tended to run through their smaller fuel tanks much faster during intense physical activity. He was sitting pretty at 79 percent himself and he bet his double was about the same.

"I know," Rewind said, "I just, you know, it doesn't really bother me. I don't feel anything until it sinks down really low these days. I'm not ignoring it on purpose."

"Well then, you need to keep a better eye on it in the future," his double said, sorting through their packed supplies. "You wouldn't want to faint and freak us both out."

"The nagging would never cease," Rewind said, leaning his head back to rest against Chromedome's chest. At some point he'd shifted to sitting on his lap, using Chromedome's bent knees to prop his feet up.

"You bet it wouldn't," Chromedome said, reaching a hand over blindly to grab at the cube his double passed over. He inspected it and then pinched off a taste, crisp and sweet. "You want a straw, Rewind?"

"You could feed it to me," Rewind said lowly. "If you wanted to."

"Um, wow, I mean, yes? I've never done that," Chromedome said. "So don't laugh if I mess it up, okay?"

Rewind tipped his head sideways a bit to face Chromedome. "I promise," he said. With a click, he lowered his mouthplate and exposed his auxiliary intake. Chromedome let one of his fingers drift over it and Rewind momentarily raised the suction, pulling his finger in with a hiss. It tickled.

Rewind had already explained that he couldn't detect the actual taste of energon, or engex for that matter. He just didn't have the sensors to detect it and never had. Which went a long way to explaining him keeping to Ratchet's 'thirty cycles on med-grade C' prescription. Chromedome couldn't see why he couldn't just get those sensors added as an augmentation, but Rewind very much wasn't interested.

Carefully, he pinched off a bit of the cube, which was a soft gel. His double moved back over to sit by his side and drink his own cube, shoulder wheels bumping as he watched in amusement. "Maybe a little less," the backseat driver suggested.

Chromedome ate that bit and then pinched off an even tinier bit before raising it up to Rewind. Another ticklish bit of suction and Rewind had swallowed it down. "More," Rewind said, the resonance of his vocoder strange with his mouthplate lowered. He'd never seen Rewind lower it for longer than the time it took to take a quick sip from a straw before. _It's because he trusts you._

They made it most of the way through the cube before Rewind started grumbling about being _too_ full and then Chromedome had to gamely finish off the rest himself. Afterwards, when they were all curled up together under the patter of rain against the tarp, full tanks beginning to nudge them towards sleep, Rewind offered to show them the footage from the hike up.

"It's a little rough, the edits aren't all where I'd maybe end up putting them in a final draft," Rewind hedged.

"You know we want to see it anyway," his double said. Chromedome murmured his agreement.

Rewind lifted a hand to the projector controls and light spilled across the tarp above them. The white light blurred and then focused, recognizable as an image of a cloud floating overhead. It drifted and then cut to the silhouette of the mountain, tiny from when they had first left the city. Then then to the swaying of the trees and then a single fluttering leaf. It drifted through tiny frames of their hike, each one of some little bit of nature. Some were captured to make them seem emcompassingly huge, others just made Chromedome feel lonely, the fragility of a single gossamer strand of spiderweb broken by Rewind's finger. Then the shot pivoted and the two of them appeared in the frame, a few steps away. In the picture, he could see his own body language soften, could remember the moment when he'd met Rewind's optics from down the path and that surge of fondness.

From there, the video seemed to be mostly of _them_. Close shots of hands, long shots of them walking and climbing. His double offering him a hand up on one especially tricky ascent. Him running his hand over a stand of grass. His hands wrapped tight around Rewind when they'd been cuddling after setting up tent. The surprise on his face when that flock of birds had lit from the tree, pivoting up to see the birds meet the sky.

On that final shot, as the birds disappeared up into the distance, Rewind had juxtaposed the audio of him reading out his threnody in clickspeak, the clickspeak fading into the meaningless patter of rain. After that, the projector shut off.

"I'm not really used to making conceptual stuff, I usually stick to documentaries," Rewind said, hedging against their disapproval. "It was just an experiment."

"Well, I'm no artist, but I liked it," Chromedome said. "I liked that you could tell how much you cared about everything, all the way through. Everything looks so much more interesting through your eyes. Even _I_ seem interesting when you film it."

"What can I say, I'm a little obsessed," Rewind said.

It was only as he finally drifted off that Chromedome realized that he hadn't heard the sound of phantom rain all evening, too busy hearing the sound of actual rain.

 

* * *

 

"Chromedome wake up! The stars are out." Rewind said.

"Wha?" He said, onlining his optics to a panorama of stars, Rewind leaning over at the edge of his vision. "Yes, stars, okay. Why are we waking up for stars?"

"It's not a camping trip until you've found the collection of stars that most resembles Prowl being beaten by a blunt instrument," his double said groggily. Someone must have taken down the tarp to expose the starscape above, maybe Rewind himself. He certainly seemed awake enough. Chromedome reminded himself what Ratchet had said about irregular disturbed recharge cycles and tried to find the grace to forgive the little guy for waking him up. It would come. It would come once he was actually awake.

He peered up at the sky. You couldn't see near as many stars down on the ground, the atmosphere shielding many of them from sight. It seemed to make it easier to pick out and group them into constellations. "I think I found one," he said after a klik.

"Ooh, really?" Rewind said, putting his head up by Chromedome's to try and catch sight of the same perspective.

"Yeah. If you start up by that really bright blue one? You can trace out the words 'GO TO SLEEP'."

"You are no fun," Rewind said. "Okay, what about this one? Over by the horizon, just above those two trees, it almost looks like Red Alert carrying Rung-" he cut off as a meteor blazed across the sky, it's tail so bright it left an afterimage in Chromedome's vision for a moment.

"That's good luck, right?" His double said.

"It is unless that was one of the shuttles breaking up in the atmosphere," he said, only 95 percent joking.

"Chromedome!" They said in unison, tackling him onto the ground in a pile of limbs.

"You're impossible," Rewind murmured.

"You're both impossible," his double said, wrapping an arm around them both. "My two impossible mechs."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey y'all, thanks for reading along with me, you've been wonderful. I hope that was at least a minimally satisfying ending. If you missed it, there are a few shorts from Rewind's perspective to fill in some emotional gaps in the story - just check out the series link.
> 
> and, just for fun, soundtracks:  
> chapter 1 - Logan OST, Hurt by Johnny Cash  
> chapter 2 - full discography of the band Arco  
> chapter 3 - Les Revenants by Mogwai, Logan soundtrack again  
> chapter 4 - A Man Called Ove soundtrack, Carol soundtrack, Love is Connection by Duke Special  
> chapter 5 - Kiki's Delivery Service, a recording of rain
> 
> EDIT: @alotofspiders made fanart for this story! ohmygosh. You should go see it and tell them it's lovely [over here](https://notwhelmedyet.tumblr.com/post/170497675489/alotofspiders-tfilf-for-this-post-a-list-and).

**Author's Note:**

> I'm over on tumblr at [ notwhelmedyet](http://notwhelmedyet.tumblr.com/), having mtmte feelings and very slowly rereading + liveblogging the experience. If you have any fic ideas for asexual gay space car robots, especially ones heavy on feelings, send them my way!


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